Badass Women #6

Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza & Opal Tometi

Three friends who told the world that Black Lives Matter. After the overeager neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing unarmed Black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza was appalled at the reactions she saw on Facebook. Instead of focusing on Zimmerman’s racist vigilante violence, people were posting about Black boys dressing like thugs and smoking weed. Determined to change the frame, Garza, a special projects director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, posted what she’s called a love letter to Black people on her Facebook page that included the phrase “Black lives matter.”While Garza worked with two of her organizer friends, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi that simple-but-profound phrase morphed into the now ubiquitous hashtag #Black Lives Matter at the heart of a movement. Under that banner, Garza, Cullors, and Tometi have co-organized mass marches, done hundreds of interviews, and set up “freedom rides” to Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s killing. To date there are more than 20 active chapters of #BlackLivesMatter — and the phrase has entered the cultural mainstream, with recent name-checks everywhere from a speech by Hillary Clinton to the season finale of Empire.



a powerful Black woman - Alicia Garza, Black Life Matters